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Time to Do the Job Properly—The Case for a New Approach to EU Consumer Legislation

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Abstract

Following 25 years of legislative activity in the field of consumer law, the EU has proposed major reforms to the consumer law acquis. Existing legislation is largely based on directives harmonizing aspects of national consumer laws. This paper argues that a more appropriate approach for EU consumer law would be legislation in the form of a regulation which is applicable to cross-border transactions only. This argument will consider the constitutional constraints of the EU Treaties, before examining the case for a cross-border-only measure. It will be argued that the cross-border approach is preferable, because it would provide clearer benefits for consumers seeking to buy goods/services across borders, while not upsetting domestic law unnecessarily, in particular in the context of e-commerce.

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Notes

  1. E.g., Distance Selling of Financial Services (2002/65/EC) and Consumer Credit (2008/48/EC).

  2. The Commission’s recent cross-border e-commerce communication (Commission 2009) in which the difficulties for cross-border B2C e-commerce are discussed. Emphasis is placed on harmonization of national law, but this paper will argue that a cross-border-only focus should be pursued instead.

  3. If a neutral law is expressly chosen as governing the contract, then a third national law comes into the picture.

  4. C-376/98 Germany v Parliament and Council (“Tobacco Advertising”) [2000] ECR I-8419.

  5. E.g., case C-59/89 Commission v Germany [1991] ECR I-2607, para. 18.

  6. E.g., case 363/85 Commission v Italy [1987] ECR 1733.

  7. Director-General of Fair Trading v First National Bank [2001] UKHL 52; Office of Fair Trading v Abbey National plc and others [2009] UKSC 6.

  8. Case C-287/98 Luxembourg v Linster [2000] ECR I-6917; case 327/82 Ekro v Produktschap voor Vee en Vlees [1984] ECR 107, paragraph 11; C-151/02 Landeshauptstadt Kiel v Jaeger [2003] ECR I-8389, para. 58.

  9. Those on Doorstep-Selling (85/577/EEC), Distance Selling (97/7/EC), Sales (99/44/EC), Unfair Terms (93/13/EEC), Package Travel (90/314/EEC), Timeshare (94/47/EC), Unit Pricing (98/6/EC) and Injunctions (98/27/EC).

  10. Available at http://www.eu-consumer-law.org/

  11. Sales (COM (2007) 210 final); Distance Selling (COM (2006) 514 final).

  12. Directive 2008/122/EC.

  13. The arguments presented by the Commission are analyzed in more detail below.

  14. This is the so-called principle of horizontal direct effect of a directive, which has time and again be rejected by the ECJ. See e.g., C-91/92 Faccini Dori v Recreb SRL [1994] ECR I-3325 and C-192/94 El Corte Ingles SA v Rivero [1996] ECR I-1281.

  15. For an early discussion of this, see Micklitz and Weatherill (1993), esp. pp. 304-313, although the authors do not consider whether the principle could be deployed to focus EU action on cross-border issues.

  16. Article 5 of the Protocol on the application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality.

  17. C-491/01 The Queen v Secretary of State for Health ex parte British American Tobacco (Investment) Ltd and others [2002] ECR I-11543.

  18. C-344/04 The Queen on the application of International Air Transport Association, European Low Fares Airline Association v Department for Transport [2006] ECR I-403, para. 80.

  19. Legrand (2005, pp. 26-7) provides a colorful illustration of this problem in the context of the debate about a European Civil Code.

  20. The potential difficulties this would create are dealt with below, in arguing for a cross-border only measure.

  21. C-465/00, C138/01 and C-139/01 Rechnungshof v Österreichischer Rundfunk and others; Neukomm and Lauermann v Österreichischer Rundfunk [2003] ECR I-4989.

  22. The additional advantage in Article 169(4) TFEU, according to which any measures adopted on the basis of Article 169(2)(b) only have minimum harmonization character would not be relevant as the EUCTR proposed here would only be of cross-border application. Contrast Reich (2005).

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  1. Law School, University of Hull, Hull, HU6 7RX, UK

    Christian Twigg-Flesner

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Twigg-Flesner, C. Time to Do the Job Properly—The Case for a New Approach to EU Consumer Legislation. J Consum Policy 33, 355–375 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10603-010-9141-6

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